


homeward bound

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas POV, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: The first time he says it that Castiel can recall, he’s angry with Castiel. At the time, Dean was still unknown and frustrating to him, a strange patchwork anomaly of half-healed scars and gunpowder and a temper like wildfire, a crosswind to the tenderness Castiel also sees in him, in the quieter moments. (Or, how "home" changes in meaning over the years.)





	homeward bound

**Author's Note:**

> (This isn't a new fic; I'm just reposting stuff from my tumblr for safekeeping.)

**1.**

The first time he says it that Castiel can recall, he’s angry with Castiel. At the time, Dean was still unknown and frustrating to him, a strange patchwork anomaly of half-healed scars and gunpowder and a temper like wildfire, a crosswind to the tenderness Castiel also sees in him, in the quieter moments.

Castiel stands staunch as they argue, cool in the face of Dean’s blistering anger. They’re fighting over the apocalyptic seals; over which in particular, Castiel can no longer remember.

“We’re both getting pretty damn sick of getting yanked around like dogs on leashes,” Dean’s saying, raw with indignation; Sam, a fellow unfamiliar beside him, is removed. Annoyed, but oddly indifferent. Demon blood coursing through him, an unpleasant and sulfurous heat that Castiel can sense across the room.

“There is nothing,” Castiel says evenly, “I can do about that.”

Dean’s eyes search his face, hunting for something Castiel’s certain he won’t find. He is, however, perversely drawn to Dean’s apparent certainty that he’ll find something recognizable there. Something strange and foreign in him yearns in that moment to reach back, to ease Dean’s anger and hurt and frustration. It shakes him, and as a creature rarely rattled, this sensation also unnerves him.

That single, resounding pang of sympathy, he realizes much, much later, had been his undoing. He was fated to be doomed by Dean Winchester from the moment he blazed past hell’s gates.

“Come on, Sam,” Dean says, anger rapidly hardening from lava to stone—his eyes are cold now as they take Castiel in, all derision. “We’re going home.”

They leave Castiel standing in the motel alone, and he stays for a long time straight-backed, staring at ugly yellow patterns on the cheap wallpaper.

—

**2.**

“We’re going home,” Dean says, words clipped and harsh with tension, directly above Castiel, directed at him. Castiel watches his own blood eke out between the slats of his fingers with dazed apathy, even pulling a hand away to investigate more closely.

“Go without me,” he replies, looking over his bloody hand. The sound of his own voice is firm but stilted with suppressed pain. “I can heal myself once I regain my energy.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Dean snaps, then shifts from foot to foot as though agitated. “I’m not leaving you in a warehouse in Fuck-All Wyoming just so you can bleed out.”

“I’ll be fine,” Castiel says, surprised at the note he detects in Dean’s voice. He’s strangely touched by Dean’s concern, as unnecessary and bemusing as it is. He thinks it may be the first time he’s put a name to the feeling. “You and Sam are free to leave.”

“Just,” Dean says through his teeth, then blows out a sharp breath. He looks to the door of the warehouse with a hard jaw, then back to Castiel. “Would you just get in the damn car? Don’t make me beg you.”

“Dean,” Castiel begins.

“Cas,” Dean says, sharper. “I’m not negotiating, alright? If you’d just—stop being a jackass, okay.” He holds out a hand, then jerks four fingers in an impatient “come on” gesture when Castiel just blinks at it.

The touched feeling creeps up in his chest again, like a hearth in his physical bones—an unfamiliar warmth. Fondness, closeness. For the first time, Castiel wonders if he’s something besides expendable to Dean and his brother.

Castiel takes Dean’s hand with a wince, and Dean hauls him up, clapping a hand to his shoulder to steady him. Castiel nods once, pressing the hand tighter to his ribcage where the angel blade had caught his shirt and torn sideways, into his skin.

“You make everything so damn difficult,” Dean grumbles, shuffling away, and Castiel notices with interest that the tips of his ears are red.

—

**3.**

The second time Dean says it by the riverside in purgatory, “we’re going home,” the hollow cave in Castiel’s chest splinters and cracks, threatening to collapse. He feels the weight of Dean’s arms around him for the rest of the day, like phantom wings.

Castiel’s will is stone, absolute. But when Dean looks at him in the quiet moments between frays, his eyes soft and ragged with battle, for the first time, he truly knows the feeling of erosion.

Castiel comes to two realizations, shuffling over the bloody salt and earth of purgatory woods.

To stay here for the remainder of his days, away from earth, would be unbearable. To live without Dean would be self-created hell.

Sometimes, throughout the days and nights, Castiel allows himself to imagine it, like the practice of flagellation he’d always scorned in radical believers. Imagining yielding to Dean’s warmth, a pulsing flare even in the watery darks and grays of a monster realm, seems to be the most potent form of torture. This, he also reflects, was the intention of purgatory in the first place, was it not? To repent? Self-annihilation is nothing less than he deserves.

That night, Dean lies across from him on the hard soil while Benny makes rounds. His eyes are soft and rounded, just barely reflecting the light of an alien moon—a dimension away from the bloodlust and the hard armor Castiel sees there during the daytime.

Dean says the words again, quietly, as though he can’t believe it, “We’re going home, Cas.”

The cave in Castiel’s chest cracks through and collapses. He can feel the gravel filling his throat, his chest.

He can’t lie to Dean, not anymore, so he lets himself believe it. Just briefly, like a man possessed, his hand comes up to catch the side of Dean’s cheek. Bristled with stubble. Dean doesn’t flinch away, like Castiel wondered if he might; he closes his eyes slowly, as though pained. Perhaps it’s the first touch of kindness and familiarity he’s received in this wasteland.

Castiel wonders how long he’ll survive without Dean, like a plant choked from the sun. He surmises that he won’t.

Strange as it is, this brings him peace. Coward as he is, he won’t have to burn for too much longer.

“Soon,” Dean says.

—

**4.**

When they leave Nora’s house, Castiel’s wrist is a dull throb in its sling. Each stab of pain seems to remind him, all too well, of his own futility; he hates the careful way Dean looks at him, as though he’s something newly fragile or breakable.

Castiel supposes he is, now. He reflects bitterly that there was once a time that he was a typhoon in a mason jar. Papercuts, indigestion, and a bad back from sleeping on a gas station floor hadn’t even qualified as blips on the radar, even in a vessel.

“Where to?” Dean asks over the top of the Impala with forced cheer, and Castiel feels the words like a thumb to a bruise. He doesn’t answer, and gets in the car. Dean hesitates, then follows after. For a moment, they sit, the car still off. Dean jostles his leg like he’s nervous or about to say something, and the Impala keys resting on his thigh slide off his jeans sideways, down by Castiel’s feet.

“Sorry,” Dean mutters, ducking to get them as Castiel does, and when he resurfaces, he catches Castiel’s gaze with a wide-eyed, frozen expression, less than a breath’s length away. Castiel’s human heart skips a beat, then pounds, pounds, pounds—

Dean’s eyes flick to his mouth, and he wets his lips, and Castiel is paralytic, the pain in his wrist entirely forgotten.

Dean leans away. A pocket of cold follows in a rush to the space between them.

The stutter in Castiel’s pulse hardens into a steady ache.

“Let’s go home,” Dean says, his voice unexpectedly gentle, and for one disbelieving moment, Castiel thinks Dean may be talking about the bunker. He realizes with a swooping sensation a moment later that he means a motel, probably a random place nearby, but for just a minute, he allows himself to believe it. He thinks Dean might too.

—

**5.**

The last time Dean says it, they’re on the tail-end of a hunt. Castiel is caught somewhere between the prefix and suffix of his name at the time—some ambiguous and untitled space between Cas the human, Castiel the angel. It takes beheading a vampire in the backseat of the Impala and lying there winded, gasping for breath and mottled with monster blood, for Dean to wrench the back door practically off its hinges.

“Cas,” Dean says, and Castiel feels familiar hands on his face. “Talk to me.”

“I’m—” Castiel  says, trying to catch his breath, but before he can, Dean kisses him, fast and warm and fierce. He tastes like the dust from the highway, his hands fastened securely to either side of Castiel’s face. Castiel cups one hand to the back of Dean’s neck and with the other, weakly palms the leather seat.

Dean pulls away just as fast, his breathing harsh from adrenaline. His hands haven’t moved from Castiel’s face.

“—okay,” Castiel finishes.

There’s a pink flush traveling quickly up to color Dean’s cheeks.

“More than okay,” Castiel adds, mentally clawing through his stupefied state to say something, anything, to convince Dean of how he feels, of how long he’s felt it.

“Okay,” Dean says, and his thumb moves against Castiel’s cheek. A moment later, Dean’s forehead rests against his. For a long time, they breathe together through the adrenaline.

Finally, Dean speaks.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

For all his vast and numerous languages, Castiel can’t find the words to tell him he already is.


End file.
